


The Mess We Made (Is Ketchup)

by DashFlintceschi



Series: Prompt Table [9]
Category: Bring Me The Horizon, You Me At Six
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:28:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26102692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DashFlintceschi/pseuds/DashFlintceschi
Summary: Who better to solve a murder mystery than a team of forensic investigators?
Series: Prompt Table [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/510521
Kudos: 3





	The Mess We Made (Is Ketchup)

**Author's Note:**

> Number 10 - Police

Dan is tired. Not just the ‘hour 13 of a 15 hour shift’ tired that has him slugging back his ninth cup of coffee, he’s burned out. He loves his job, though being a forensic investigator isn’t as cool as CSI makes it out to be, it’s still amazing that he gets to help people and solve mysteries. But he’s bone tired of seeing people on the very worst day of their lives, and of those days when there just isn’t enough evidence and they have to let people down. Those days seem to be coming more and more frequently lately.

Dan isn’t the only one on the team feeling this way, and Chris can see it. As their shift leader, it’s his job to fix it, but he’s not sure how. Until he gets word that their whole team is somehow getting the next bank holiday weekend off, and the lab upstairs will be covering so theirs will be empty, and an idea comes to him. He feels bad convincing them all to come in on the first Saturday they’ve had off in months, but at least he doesn’t start until mid-afternoon, so it’s hard to feel guilty when he let them sleep til lunchtime.

They’re all still sleepy and a little disgruntled as they file into the meeting room and get comfy. He gives them a while to get some more coffee into their systems and hate him a little less, then stands up.

“There’s going to be a murder.” He announces, smiling at the way they stare at him in confusion. “One of you is going to be murdered by someone in this room, and we have to solve it. And the murderer has to pretend to help us.” He elaborates, and he sees understanding dawn on each of their faces one by one. He’d been a little worried they wouldn’t be up for it, it could’ve been a little too much like just being at work, but he’s glad to see the reason he had the idea; the puzzle solving they all love with nothing real at stake; is filling them with the same excitement he feels.

Well, all except Max, who’s looking around blearily as he raises his hand.

“Can I volunteer to die, I think I’m still drunk.” He asks as they laugh, and Chris considers it for a moment. He nods and reaches for the bowl full of slips of paper with their roles. There’s not much point in having it, all but two of them read ‘investigator’, but he wants to make it so even he doesn’t know who the murderer is. Thankfully, he finds the ‘victim’ slip on the third try, handing it to Jordan and letting them pass it up the table to Max while he refolds the other two as uniformly as he can and drops them back into the bowl.

He gives the bowl a good shake to mix them in properly, then picks out a slip for himself, then passes the bowl around. They all make a show of exaggeratedly shaking it, which is only slightly funny, until Josh shakes it around for at least twenty seconds before finally taking the last slip out. There’s a wave of feigned suspicious looks that goes around the table as they open their slips and quickly check what their role is, a few of them letting out dramatic cheers and fist-pumps as they read theirs.

“Do I get to lie down now?” Max groans, and Chris snorts as he shakes his head and reaches into his bag.

“Not yet, we need this to ‘go missing’ before the murderer can catch you when the lights ‘mysteriously go out’.” He grins, dropping the plastic toy knife on the table.

They all get up from the table, casting each other a few slightly less fake suspicious glances as they filter out of the room. Half of them work their way around the lab, shutting the blinds on the few windows they have so it’ll be fully dark when the lights go out; the other half pretending to go about their jobs, which mostly consists of fighting over who gets to use the coffee machine first. Chris notices that the toy knife is gone from the table barely five minutes after they’ve all left the room, and grins to himself. Whoever got the job of murderer is going to make this good, he can tell.

Once he’s sure no-one’s entirely expecting it anymore, Chris uses the app he downloaded especially for the game to switch all the lights off. He counts to 120 in his head, even though he hears Max’s soft yelp of surprise at being poked in the chest after 30 seconds, then switches them back on. Max is sprawled on the floor with an exaggerated ‘dead’ look on his face, and there’s no-one anywhere near him. Perfect.

They all gather around him to collect evidence, Oli deciding early on to make it his job to lightly slap Max every time he squirms.

“Dead people aren’t ticklish,” he chides when Max complains, and Max huffs as he can’t help but agree with that, trying harder now to stay still and taking the light smacks quietly when he can’t. They leave him there to get comfortable and most likely nap as they move to the actual lab to process their evidence.

There isn’t much, which is a good thing, they can’t justify the use of the more expensive to run machines when they aren’t even supposed to be there. They find a brown hair that’s too short to be one of Max’s, and a partial fingerprint. The hair doesn’t narrow it down much, it only eliminates a few of them, and even then, the hair could’ve gotten stuck on Max’s jumper at any point. The fingerprint is even less useful, since Dan sight-checks it against all their fingerprints, and it turns out to be one of Max’s own prints.

They decide to take turns interrogating each other, not usually a part of their job, but too fun an idea to pass up. Josh and Lee are about to lead their first suspect, Nicholls, to the make-shift interrogation room, when the lights go off again.

“Chris? What’re you doing?” Tom calls out, and Chris shrugs even though he knows they won’t see it.

“It’s not me, I swear.” He calls back, fumbling to feel out his phone.

“Ow! What the fuck?” Chris thinks that might’ve been Matt, and he gives up on getting to his phone, stumbling to the wall to switch the lights on. They all stare at the red smear on Matt’s t-shirt with horror, until he dabs it and sniffs. “Who the fuck poked me and squirted ketchup on me?” He asks, and they all sigh in relief.

“Think you’ve been murdered, mate.” Josh laughs, and Chris frowns.

“He wasn’t supposed to be, there was only meant to be one victim.” He tells them, and they all shrug.

“Might be more fun this way, if the killer’s upping the stakes?” Lee suggests, and Chris really can’t find a reason to complain, it does feel like it’ll be more fun if there’s the tension of not knowing who’s next, so he just shrugs and nods.

“Fuck it, why not.” He grins, and there’s various cheerful noises of agreement as Josh and Lee continue leading Nicholls to the meeting room. There’s no real point now, he hadn’t moved from between them when the lights were out, but they’re not going to rule him out yet anyway.

They get through most of them, jokingly half-heartedly patting each of them down as they bring them in; neither of them would have ended the game this early if they had felt the knife under someone’s clothes; when the lights start flickering. They do that sometimes even when they aren’t playing dumb games, so they don’t pay any attention to it, until they go out properly. Josh thinks he hears shuffling, and though he’s not sure he’s even heard it, it still makes him nervous. He finally relaxes when the lights come back on a few minutes later and he hasn’t felt a poke to his chest. He makes a soft surprised noise when he looks at Lee and Tom, and sees a smear of ketchup on Lee’s t-shirt. Josh and Tom eye each other suspiciously for a moment, until Lee clears his throat quietly.

“I know I’m dead and not supposed to talk, but the door’s open a little bit, it wasn’t before.” He points out, and they both look, suspecting each other slightly less when they see that he’s right, they’d closed it properly before, and it’s slightly ajar now. They all jump when Dan pokes his head around the door at that moment.

“He got Vegan. Oh, and Lee too, I guess. Huh.” Dan sounds as confused as the three of them feel, and they get up to follow him out into the hall. Tom and Josh make a show of pretending to carry Lee, so no-one can complain that he moved after he ‘died’. Chris and Oli have done the same with Vegan, so all four of the victims are propped side by side against the wall in the wide hallway, Max’s head on Matt’s shoulder as he snores softly.

Josh thinks he has it narrowed down. He won’t say anything or use it other than to figure it out for himself, but currently he thinks only Oli or Jordan can have the knife. He hadn’t tried too hard to find it when he’d patted any of them down, and the killer still could have hidden it somewhere he hadn’t been able to feel it, so he might be wrong, but they’re his two main suspects for the moment.

“Alright, where was everyone when the murders happened?” Tom asks, and they all take turns accounting for their whereabouts. Only Tom and Josh were in the same room as either of them; Oli and Dan had been getting more coffee, Chris was in the lab double checking the fingerprint they’d found earlier, and Jordan and Nicholls sheepishly admit to having snuck out onto the fire escape for a cigarette. They’re all a little suspicious of Chris, as the only one who hadn’t been with someone else at the time, and Josh deflates a little as both his suspects have alibis, and they all swear they didn’t hear or feel the person they were with move from their place. But wait…

“The killer came into the interrogation room, and we didn’t even hear him, didn’t hear the door open or anything. If he could do that without us hearing him or feeling an extra person in the room, how sure are you that you’d have noticed him leaving?” Josh asks, and they all consider it for a moment, before looking at each other as the suspicion spreads out to all of them again.

“So that means it could’ve been you or Tom too, then. Hell, makes it more likely, since you were in the room with one of the victims. Maybe you thought he heard you, or suspected something?” Dan suggests, and Josh and Tom look to each other.

“You definitely didn’t move.” Tom sounds more like he’s asking it than saying it, and Josh nods a little.

“And you definitely didn’t move.” He sounds more confident, and he takes a moment to wonder why he feels so confident, grinning when he figures it out.

“It definitely wasn’t either of us. The chairs in there are squeaky as hell, even you guys would’ve heard if either of us moved.” He announces, and though they all know how right he is, they’ve suffered through enough meetings on the damned things, they’re still not willing to totally rule either of them out as the killer, but they run with that alibi, for now.

“Okay, that rules those two out, what about the rest of us?” Nicholls asks, and Chris nods towards him and Jordan.

“I think we can rule you two out for the same reason, that fire door is loud as hell too.” He comments, but Oli shakes his head.

“We didn’t hear them go out there though, if they got out without us hearing, one of them could have come back in without us hearing too.” He argues, and they all sigh in frustration.

“So it still could’ve been any of us.” Chris surmises, and at that moment, the lights go off again.

They all freeze, straining to listen for the tiniest noise, but they only hear two quick yelps of surprise, and then the lights come back on, and everyone is still standing exactly where they had been.

“I have no idea which of you is doing this, but you’re a fucking ghost and I hate you.” Jordan laughs as he and Chris cross the hall to join their make-shift morgue. Josh is frowning deeply in thought, until Tom nudges him curiously.

“None of us are near the light switches. The killer could have the app Chris used, but no-one had their phone out. It’d have been too big of a giveaway, lighting his phone up to turn them back on. How the fuck did he do the lights?” He wonders, mostly to himself, and he has a point.

“We really should’ve thought to ask Chris about that app before he died.” Dan hums, and though they’re trying their best to ignore any sounds or movements from the victims, they can’t help but grin at the snorting laugh Chris lets out.

They spend the next hour reviewing the little evidence they have, and inspecting the victims and crime scenes for more. They decide to take a break when they start feeling a little frustrated again. The five of them separate to do their own thing for a few minutes before meeting in the break room, and when they do, Nicholls comes back from getting his phone charger from his locker with an odd look on his face.

“I think I just got stabbed in the back.” He announces, and they’re all doubtful, the lights didn’t even go off, but when he turns around for them to check, there’s a slash of ketchup across his back.

“Wait, you didn’t even see him?” Josh asks, and the other three make disapproving noises, he can’t question a dead person. “I’m not asking as part of the game, I’m curious.” He defends, and they have to admit, they’re curious too. And one of them must be slightly nervous.

“I didn’t see or hear a goddamn thing. Didn’t even feel the ketchup. Just felt the poke in the back and there was no-one fucking there when I turned. One of you is a fucking ghost.” Nicholls sounds baffled and the tiniest bit frustrated, and none of them can blame him. It was weird enough with the others when none of them heard him in the dark, but with the lights on, in a big open room like that, it’s almost spooky.

They take their much needed break, and as they’re leaving the break room to figure out where to start next, Josh snags Tom’s elbow.

“I need a fucking smoke, got any?” He asks softly, and Tom huffs.

“I do too, left them in the bloody house, though.” He grumbles, and Oli pauses in front of them, half turning to look at them over his shoulder.

“Dan keeps his on that weird little shelf in the toilets next to the fire escape.” He suggests quietly, and the three of them nod to each other. They’ll buy him another pack later to make up for it.

The three of them sneak away and duck into the toilet, Oli and Josh taking turns feeling around on the high shelf as Tom heads over to a urinal. He’s just finished washing his hands when Oli makes a soft surprised noise and drags the contents of the shelf off.

“Looks like it’s game over, lads.” He laughs in shock as he holds up his hand to show them. Along with Dan’s cigarettes and lighter, are the toy knife and a tiny bottle of ketchup. Josh is stunned, Dan was just about the only one he hadn’t suspected at any point. “I don’t know about either of you, but I reckon we can take a few minutes to have a smoke before we finish this.” He suggests, and they both nod.

“Not like he can get any of us when we’re all out there together, and have his murder weapon.” Tom laughs, and Oli hands the props to Josh so he can slip three cigarettes from the pack and put it back up on the shelf.

They’re not paying much attention to their surroundings as they leave the toilets and turn towards the fire escape, and that’s their downfall. They don’t even notice Dan leaning against the wall beside the toilet door until Josh squawks as he’s grabbed from behind. Oli and Tom spin around just in time to see Dan pull the knife and bottle from Josh’s hand, holding them to Josh’s throat as he flicks open the cap with his thumb.

“Would’ve gotten away with it if you weren’t thieving bastards.” He laughs, squirting a line of sauce along Josh’s neck as he pulls the knife across it. He shoves Josh at them to give himself enough time to turn the knife in his hand, squeezing a large blob onto his t-shirt as he pokes himself in the chest.

“Oh, I fucking hate you.” Tom growls jokingly, and Dan laughs, shrugging unapologetically.

“Go enjoy your stolen goods, I’ll go free the others from the morgue.”

“No, wait, hang on.” Josh makes them all pause, Dan raising an eyebrow curiously. “How the fuck did you do the lights?” He asks, and Dan snorts.

“Didn’t even need the app for that. Turns out if you leave the switches balanced in the middle, they’ll flick off on their own after a few minutes.” He grins, and the three of them laugh loudly as they make their way outside.

As they all stand out on the fire escape a few minutes later, some of them smoking and most of them just enjoying the fresh air and being able to move freely again, they realise just how good an idea this was. They feel lighter and happier than they have in a long time, and though the job won’t be any easier when they come back on Tuesday, that doesn’t seem like such a bad thing now.


End file.
